Jack Williamson

John Stewart Williamson, known as Jack Williamson (Bisbee, Arizona, 1908 - Portales, New Mexico, 2006), was an American science fiction writer. His career spanned more than seven decades, from his first stories for pulp magazines in the late 1920s to novels he published as a nonagenarian in the 2000s. He is regarded as one of the genre's most respected veterans, and he is credited with coining the word "terraforming".

He was born into a farming family and spent his childhood in Texas and New Mexico, where the family moved by covered wagon in 1915. Without money for schooling, he taught himself using the local library and discovered Amazing Stories. His first sold story, "The Metal Man", appeared in 1928. Guidance from the physician and writer Miles J. Breuer helped him move away from loose fantasy toward tighter plotting. After a psychiatric evaluation in 1933, his stories took on a more realistic tone. His breakthrough came with The Legion of Space, serialized in 1934.

In the 1950s he enrolled at Eastern New Mexico University, earned his degree in English, and joined its faculty in 1960. His doctorate from the University of Colorado focused on the early works of H. G. Wells. He became one of the figures who promoted the academic study of science fiction, and in 1971 he helped found the Science Fiction Research Association. He was named a Grand Master by the SFWA in 1975 and was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 1996. His legacy lives on in his fiction, his memoir, and the science fiction library that bears his name at the university.